Liu Ye was born in 1964 and graduated from the Beijing Central Academy of Fine Arts from the Mural Painting Dept. and then earned a Masters of Fine Arts from Hochschule der Kunst in Berlin Germany.
In Liu Ye’s art, humor and sadness blend into a whole. The stillness of his ironic images provide us with a deep sense of detachment and timeless freedom. Part of the post 89′ avant garde movement, his art is disinterested in the external flux taking place in modern China. Instead, Liu captures the inner solitude and vulnerability of the artist in face of the enormous changes taking place on a global scale and in Chinese society.
Liu Ye has a highly individualistic attitude towards art, the world he creates is a personal and intimate space of concepts and thought, he reflects a personal realm which is saturated in the general mood he lives in. Liu Ye’s art displays enchanting and cute figures of naïve people, sometimes as famous as the pope, Fellini and Buster Keaton, in paradoxical contexts or still colorful backgrounds, the initial happiness we encounter is on the verge of slipping into melancholy while the subtle humor in the images propels one to think and investigate the unique world on the canvas.
Today, one of China’s best selling contemporary artists, Liu Ye is a striking example of a Chinese artist exploring his own internal world through external and anonymous figures and western icons. Most of his work is done in bright, vivid and warm colors while the more melancholic ones are toned down to dark and cold blues.
He lives and works in Beijing. – Gallery J Art M&C 2011
